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Friday, November 11, 2011

Burial of the Unknown Soldier - 1921

America's Unknown Hero Is Laid to Rest As Harding Calls on World to End War

Such Sacrifice Never Must Be Asked Again, Nation's Chief Pleads in Solemn Ceremony at Arlington
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All Nation Silent As Grave Is Sealed
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Nameless One Entombed, Amid HIghest Honors in All History, as Symbol of the Country's Fallen
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By Boyden R. Sparkes

WASHINGTON, Nov. 11.--The unidentified body of an American who died in a battlefield in France was entombed to-day in Arlington Cemetery, to live forever in the hearts of patriotic countrymen as the Unknown Soldier. Perhaps he was a homesick boy on that day when his life faded out, but if his spirit eyes saw the spectacle on that Virginia hilltop, if he heard the cry against war uttered there to-day, he knows he did not die in vain.

If his mother, unknowing, was among the sorrowing women who wept as nations honored her son, she, too, must know that his life was not a wasted sacrifice, for the President of the United States, standing beside the Silent One, voiced a pledge that American energy be dedicated to the cause of everlasting peace.

Light-hearted, his spirit may have hovered over that funeral procession as it tramped to the slow cadence of a dirge the seven miles from the capital across the Potomac to the heights where America's dead heroes have their bivouac. Rushing on ahead, an impatient, glorious spirit, he could have looked down from above on all the ceremonies in that white, unroofed amphitheater…….

By the end, the article was saying what the dead soldier's spirit DID know and see. Very weird stuff.

"His Sacrifice Shall Not Be in Vain"
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President Harding Calls for Commanding Voice of Civilization Against Warfare

President Harding, speaking at the burial of the Unknown Soldier yesterday, said:

"Standing to-day on hallowed ground, conscious that all America has halted to share in the tribute of heart and mind and soul to this fellow American, and knowing that the world is noting this expression of the Republic's mindfulness, it is fitting to say that his sacrifice, and that of the millions dead, shall not be in vain.

"There must be, there shall be, the commanding voice of a conscious civilization against armed warfare."